Page 23 of Wind Called

“Yes, I was kind of surprised by that. But even though the ranch is technically outside Sedona’s city limits, it only takes about ten minutes to get to all the restaurants and other businesses on the west end of town.”

Maybe that was part of the reason why she’d felt okay with staying here. Splitting hairs, Marc supposed, since you could see the town’s famous red rocks in pretty much every direction from the property, but still, it wasn’t part of the city despite sharing the same zip code.

“Nice work if you can get it,” he remarked, and she grinned at him, then sipped some chianti.

“Yeah, I kind of fell in clover,” she said. “The homeowner is a regular at Sedona Vines, and one night during happy hour we were chatting about how I was commuting from Jerome and wasn’t sure whether I should try to find a house someplace a little closer, like maybe in Page Springs or Cornville. And he said he had his house up for sale but didn’t like the idea of it sitting empty while it was on the market, and offered to pay me to watch the place for him. Obviously, I jumped at the chance.”

Marc thought he would have, too, if he’d been given a similar offer. Sure, he liked his vintage house in the Sam Hughes neighborhood down in Tucson, liked how it was close to so many restaurants and so much nightlife, thanks to its proximity to the university, but it couldn’t really compare to a house like this one, with its multimillion-dollar views.

Not that he would have been able to afford a place like this, even with the combination of the stipend from his clan and the money he earned running his landscape business. The house he’d bought hadn’t been too much of a stretch, just because the home was being sold by the former owner’s heirs and they’d wanted to get it off their hands as quickly as possible, but this place? It had to be worth seven figures…and not the low range, either.

“Why’s he selling?” Marc asked then. If he’d owned a place like this, he would never have wanted to move.

Bellamy shrugged and reached for another slice of pizza. “He said his portfolio was too big and that he didn’t come here enough to justify owning the house. I get the feeling he’s not much of a desert guy. At least, he said he also has houses in Telluride and Vancouver and condos in New York and L.A., and they were enough to keep him busy.”

Not for the first time, Marc wondered what it would be like to have the freedom of movement that the civilian population seemed to take for granted. True, most people weren’t rolling in the kind of cash that allowed this Ike guy to own so many premium properties, but even so, regular civilians could still pick up and live anywhere they liked, rather than being stuck in the clan territory where they’d been born.

And sure, that wasn’t completely true anymore, because with the way things had changed over the past twenty-five years or so, members of the McAllister clan had gone to live among the de la Pazes and the Wilcoxes and even the Castillos in New Mexico, but still, they didn’t move around nearly as much as nonmagical people did.

“Must be nice,” he said, and Bellamy gave an understanding nod.

“I know. I suppose I could let myself be jealous, but I decided to just be happy to stay here for as long as it all lasts.” She paused there to sip some chianti before she set the glass down again. “And after it’s sold, then I guess I’ll fall back on my original plan of trying to find a place somewhere between Jerome and Sedona.”

Since her tone was almost philosophical rather than resigned, Marc could tell she’d already made her peace with the way this couldn’t be a permanent solution to her housing situation.

“Or maybe in Sedona itself?” he suggested before adding, “I mean, it seems as if everyone is okay with you living here, so….”

“Define ‘okay,’” she said with a grin. “My dad still isn’t too thrilled with me, although I think in his case it’s just as much empty nest syndrome as anything else. But yeah, since everything’s been hunky-dory between the McAllisters and the Wilcoxes for longer than I’ve been alive, it seems kind of silly to keep treating Sedona as if it’s supposed to be this mysterious, off-limits kind of place.”

While Marc was inclined to agree with her on that point, he couldn’t help asking, “So, you don’t think there’s anything to the Sedona vortexes and that stuff?”

Still smiling, she settled against the back of her chair. “Well, I wouldn’t say it’s ‘nothing.’ There are places here where, if you go there alone and settle into your thoughts, you really can feel the energy and how it’s different from anyplace else you’ve ever been. At the same time, I’m not sure it has much to do with our witch powers. Regular people can feel those energies, too — sometimes their skin tingles, or they experience a sensation of calm and grounding with the earth. Other people just feel energized. Anyway, back in the day, maybe it was a good thing for the two witch clans to avoid the place, if only to give more of a buffer zone between our two territories. Right now, though, I think we’re shooting ourselves in the foot by avoiding such prime real estate.”

Marc couldn’t help chuckling at that comment. “Expensive real estate, I’m guessing.”

“Oh, yeah.” She reached for a slice of pizza and took a bite, her expression now almost contemplative. “Housing prices are way higher in Sedona than they are in Cottonwood or Clarkdale, or even in Jerome itself, although things there tend to be more expensive because there are so few houses to go around. But honestly, even though it’s nice to have a short commute right now, I’m not going to worry about it too much. It’s not like I’m having to drive around Phoenix.”

Or even Tucson, although he had to admit the worst thing about his hometown was how there weren’t any real freeways and you had to drive overland everywhere. If you were used to it, then the setup wasn’t such a big deal, but still, people who were accustomed to being able to jump on the highway to get where they were going always suffered a rude awakening when they dealt with having to drive across town for the first time.

Bellamy’s phone, which had been sitting on the tabletop, gave a softbingthen, and she sent Marc an apologetic look.

“I should probably check that,” she said. “It might be Devynn getting back to me about the Olsen clan.”

“It’s fine,” he replied. “I was just about to grab another slice anyway.”

Her gray eyes danced at him, even as she reached for her phone and unlocked it. For a few seconds, she was silent as she scanned the text she’d just received, but then she shook her head and set the cell phone back down on the table.

“Jeremy couldn’t find anything at all,” she said, now sounding disgusted. “Or at least, as far as he can tell, the Olsens have been a nice, polite, law-abiding clan for generations. No sign that any of them have ever left their territory in Minnesota, nothing to show there’s been any kind of drama with them at all.”

Unlike the Arizona clans, Marc thought ruefully, although he realized that most of the turmoil they’d been involved in really hadn’t been of their own making. Still, someone looking in from the outside probably would have thought they were a big old hot mess.

“But,” Bellamy went on, her tone a little more cheerful, “Devynn says that’s just from a quick inspection, and that Jeremy’s going to keep digging just in case one of them maybe went rogue and they did their best to sweep it under the rug.”

“Any mention of the amulet?” Marc said. Probably not, but he figured it couldn’t hurt to ask.

“Nope,” she replied. “I suppose it’s the sort of thing they would try to keep on the down-low — even if that Lawrence Pratt guy might have talked about losing the amulet to a couple of witches in the Arizona territories. I kind of doubt he did, though. From the way Devynn described the situation to me, he didn’t want anyone to know about the artifact or what he was using it for. So I have a feeling when he went home with his tail between his legs, he wouldn’t have said anything about it.”

That story made the most sense. After all, the warlock had been using the amulet so he could play magician to an unsuspecting public. That wasn’t the sort of thing you’d want to confess to your clan’sprima,even though Marc had a feeling the truth must have come out eventually. It was kind of hard to hide that sort of thing from someone whose magical powers were so much stronger than yours.

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